


gray is the color

by CosmicTurnabout



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Gen, Horror, Introspection, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Trauma, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-09 03:37:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19880989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CosmicTurnabout/pseuds/CosmicTurnabout
Summary: At the end of the world, he turns his mind to gray.





	gray is the color

**Author's Note:**

> My take on the doom that came to Amaurot, as seen through the eyes of Emet-Selch. Part based on what we’re given in the game, part creative license and flights of fancy. 
> 
> This is admittedly a weird, disjointed piece, and I don’t know where it came from, really. The description of Amaurot’s destruction gave me big eldritch horror vibes, so I figured I’d explore that a bit. I guess I’m still dealing with post-Shadowbringers depression? Not sure. I hope this is thought-provoking or weirdly cathartic for others, though. Would appreciate comments if you found this interesting! 
> 
> Contains graphic, bloody violence and unsettling imagery. Proceed with caution.

The colors of hell surrounded him, bled through him. 

Outside, the world burned. Inside, inside of Emet-Selch, hell pressed against the barrier of his skin, threatening to rip and tear and claw out of him, longing to join itself to the physical inferno he waded through. 

Something hideous and unknown sounded its yawp across the city, the echoes reverberating against the buildings towering above him. His very brain seemed to shiver in its casing. He was acutely aware of how soft he was, how he could be crushed, flattened, squashed at any second. He despised this feeling. All of his training, all of his knowledge felt as if it amounted to naught in the face of the overwhelming dread, the insane dreamscape facing him.

The worst had come to pass. The ideas were leaking out of the Amaurotians, every tingling fear at the corner of the mind, every lurking phantom ever imagined before sleep. They were all being formed into concepts against the wills of their creators, and they were being thrust violently into the real world. 

And the real world was so fragile, so easy to bruise. 

Emet-Selch was at a loss. The scholars had multiple fail-safes to keep their abilities in check. Even in the most dire of cases, something like this was never, ever supposed to happen.

And yet.

Time meant little now. He, like many Amaurotians, associated souls and like concepts with colors, even if the connection seemed specious to other peoples. They could _feel_ colors. Taste them. The events of the past few hours—days?—were mixed with black and white and yellow, chased through with deepest red. He experienced it all in the theater of his mind as if through a fluttering veil. He was confused, bleary-eyed. As things currently stood, he could have been in any place, at any time, for any duration. 

But he had to try to make some sense of this, to keep going. Put one foot in front of the other. Start with simple questions and work from there, as he always did. Where had he been when it all began? Ah. _This_ he could remember with clarity. He’d been in the Akadaemia with Hythlodaeus, of course, like any other day. He’d heard screaming and rumbling outside, booms in the distance. He’d run out to look, and suddenly all of the premonitions he’d been hearing about for weeks and weeks had come true-- _were_ coming true right in front of him and all throughout the city. 

Hythlodaeus had come running outside to stand next to him. He died seconds later, right there on the steps of the Akadaemia, his body reduced instantly to ash by a blazing plume of fire. The blast was so hot and so close that it incinerated the lower part of Emet-Selch’s robes, leaving only tatters and singed skin. Instinctively he looked to where the blast had come. A shifting shadow was standing absurdly close by, its back half obscured by the Akadaemia’s pillars. It slunk into the light towards Emet-Selch, and a chimera in ugly patchwork colors appeared. Smoke curled from the dragon head’s nostrils, the line of its mouth fixed into a permanent smile, cruel and jagged. The ram’s head had blue eyes, and through the wafting gray it blinked slowly at the spot where Hythlodaeus had been. In the gloom, in the aftershock, the ram looked to Emet-Selch like Hythlodaeus himself, worlds away. 

It had been so fast. One minute there, the next minute gone. Hythlodaeus had not merely been killed—he had been erased. Annihilated. 

An hour later—or was it merely seconds?—the horror of it took Emet-Selch. He let instinct drive him. A pack of hysterical Amaurotians was hemorrhaging from the doors of the Akadaemia and he followed them, bursting out into the plaza where more horrors awaited. He ran, scenes of grisly bloodshed bobbing into and out of view with the howling wind. Smoke obscured most of the scene, but he could tell that some of those he’d fled with were being attacked as they ran.

A hulking monster, the largest nearby threat, stood at the center of the plaza. It had the body of a long brown insect, thick and shuffling, with rows of teeth and sunken yellow eyes. Brown and yellow—lethargic, weighty colors. It swung its head around, hungry, looking through the press of Amaurotians for likely prey.

It killed many as Emet-Selch ran by, either by the power of its body or its gnashing, angry mouth. As if in slow motion, he saw the beast snatch up a passing Amaurotian in its jaws, its teeth rending clothing and flesh like they were naught but wet paper. The person gave a throat-rending scream; it could have been a man or a woman, it was impossible to tell. The creature bit them in twain with a snap. The victim’s ragged lower half fell away, limp and broken, blood pouring from the severed torso punched through with fangs. Gore slicked the ground beneath the beast’s claws. It fed.

A piercing sound, not unlike a siren, accompanied the chaos. Amaurotians continued to run past, desperate, screaming for their friends, their loved ones, trying to ignore the piles of charred, blood-soaked robes that littered the streets. There were piles of all shapes and sizes, hands sticking out like shoots from fresh earth. Emet-Selch took note of them all, his face tight, his neck taut. 

_There but for the grace of... of what? What higher being would allow this?_

No, no. He had to stop. He was paying too much attention to... to everything. This in itself was dangerous. Pure aether popped in the air. If he were to truly succumb to the myriad horrors, he would only create more of them. He stopped running. He stood stock still amidst the chaos, closed his eyes, and found a hollow deep inside. Cold and familiar and gray, a blank slate. He curled into it, willing himself to see without thought, to perceive without processing. He wanted to remember this insane pulsing hellworld, but he did not want to add to it. 

_I will remember this. I_ must _remember this._

Fire flashed through Emet-Selch. It burned with an aching certainty, familiar faces flying across his vision. He was back on the steps with Hythlodaeus. No, he was somewhere else entirely, in a green meadow as petals drifted lazily through the air. He was back here again, his feet on solid ground. Three more hours passed. A minute or two passed. Space was a color he had no name for, expanding and contracting with alarming speed. Time was white. The city shimmered and shook around him, beautiful, terrible, like an antique vase that could shatter in an instant. 

_Fool thought. Amaurot is already broken._

A lump formed in his throat. Something hurt behind his eyes. He shook his head and moved, his walk quickly turning back into a run.

**

He made his way through the streets. He did not know where he was going, precisely, but he thought he was headed for the western gate. He had vague notions of escaping, if he could manage it. The sky was a sweaty yellow now, granting everything under it the same sickly hue. The world rocked on its foundations. Buildings wept blood, hot and red, fountains of it gushing down windows and doors and awnings. Blistering white clusters of rock lanced from the sky into the ground, throwing up stone and clouds of choking dust. Where the rocks hit groups of Amaurotians fleeing the chaos, gouts of crimson gore and viscera blew into the air, staining the sky like flecks from a painter's brush. Emet-Selch ran through another acrid cloud, panting hard, and emerged with gristle and bits of flesh plastering his front—parts of Amaurotians he had known, maybe. Maybe not. No time to wonder how it had gotten there. No time to think. 

In closing much of his mind off to the cataclysm, it seemed he had blinkered the monsters to his presence as well. He ran past heaving sacks of meat with bulging, bulbous eyes, dripping mouths, purple teeth. He ran past a two-headed snake with great quivering fins for wings, hovering in the air and glimmering like glass in the low light. He ran past a tall man-shaped thing, black as shadow, straight as an elm. It had a yawning red mouth like the eye of a needle, and it stalked slowly after limping, terrified Amaurotians. He kept running. 

He was almost out of the city, he thought. Would he really be able to get away? What would await him if he did? He was not sure. If the other heads of the Convocation had made it out, that would increase their chances of survival considerably. But how many would survive, at any rate? For some reason his mind drifted to Hythlodaeus. He frowned and forced it back. He thought of the heat of the chimera’s hellblaze, and a pang of sorrow darted through him. What if everyone he knew had come to such an end? Had the others—no, no. He had primed himself for this. These were only useless thoughts. This was shouting into the void.

He turned his mind to gray, shutting off the flood. From a calmer place, it occurred to him that he could have let the chimera burn him too. It would have been easier. Softer. 

** 

At some point, he reached the city limits. It was a week later, half an hour later. Perhaps. The screaming had faded into a dull throb behind him. The sounds of falling debris and beastly roars were muted. Most of the buildings and structures were still intact here; indeed, he had had a hand in creating some of them years ago. The watchtower. The outer walls. The looming gate, wreathed in mist. 

He was tired. He could have slept for an age. Stumbling, he sought the shade of the watchtower and leaned against it, closing his eyes. He had a mind to recover some energy for his final push out of the city. It would be difficult to relax, but grimy and exhausted as he was, he needed to recuperate to some degree.

In happier days, he had napped in this very spot for hours... it had been a pastime of his, in a way...

Almost instantly, his eyes snapped open again. He felt a presence. The doom that had come to Amaurot granted a certain gravitas to all things, a kind of weight. There was something heavy in the air, and it demanded his attention. 

His alone.

Something slammed down onto the ground then, as if that presence, huge and lumbering, had jumped from a nearby building to the pavement. It was somewhere to his left. 

Emet-Selch turned, as if he’d been expecting this, and found himself staring at something almost inscrutable. 

It was a large thing, whatever it was. He seemed to perceive it in parts. Slab-gray eyes fixed on his own, accusing. They knew him. Four faces jutted out of its front, blinking slowly in the shadows. They hovered over something styled curiously like the organ he’d favored at the Akadaemia. That was silly, he thought. Sickeningly so. Several scaly tails swept the ground, dirty silver wings folded and unfolded restlessly on its back. The thing moaned with all those mouths, with one voice, as if its very existence was pain. 

He could not grasp the whole of the entity at once, but he recognized it, as it had him. Fear sliced like a sword. 

_Was there a crack somewhere? I was so careful. Did I--_

He stopped, but he knew it was too late. The thing reached out to him, probed his mind with aetheric tendrils. He could think of no other way to describe it. Enthralled, too fatigued and terrified to do elsewise, he let it touch his soul, let it show him what it would. 

Aether crackled, electrifying the air around him, and Emet-Selch was sent. To where, he did not know. He moved through negative space, through shapes and auras too strange to comprehend. He saw everything at once, the long roll of his life unfolding before him, snaking into eternity. It coiled and uncoiled, swallowing itself entire before stretching out again.

He was a child receiving his first set of robes.

He was an adolescent debating with a peer in the Akadaemia.

He was middle-aged, his face buried in the shoulder of a dear friend.

He was old and dying, decaying in a bed in Amaurot, two others at his side.

There were more scenes. Stranger scenes. He would live for many long years beyond this. So very many years. He would have other names, other forms.

He would die in foreign wars, alien weapons shredding him apart like so much meat.

He would kill, blood covering his hands, the copper taste of it on his tongue. Yes, with magic or with cold sharp steel, he would kill many. 

He would make love in different bodies, not in the way of the Amaurotians.

He would have children. Descendants, of a kind. But he would have little joy of them. 

There was a shuddering. If this thing could laugh, it was doing so now. Hands once strongly entwined with his fell away. Smiles were smeared into nothing. Light obscured all. The thing began to take a vaguer, blurrier tack; it was going faster now. It showed him that he would forget love—not the concept, but the feeling. He would forget warmth. He would be as the void himself, darkness incarnate, vast and powerful. He knew not how, but he looked down and saw a platform with circles flaring to life. He saw through the eyes of a king, an emperor. A ruler with many faces, and one. He dissolved into pure aether, then was made whole again. Disassembled and reassembled, over and over and over. 

It did not hurt, this annihilation and reconstitution of his being. It should have been terrifying, mind-destroying, but he found he no longer feared the thing. It felt a part of him, in a way. Inevitable. There was no true malice in its actions. It simply delighted in sharing sweet, terrible mysteries, like it was... it was...

The thing was... _playing_.

It seemed to realize he had figured it out, and this disturbed it. It put him back together one last time, made him whole. Then something pierced his chest with burning intensity, creating a diamond-shaped wound, and...

He was back. 

**

When Emet-Selch returned to himself, he was trembling. His face was wet, his breathing harsh and shallow. He staggered away from the thing, hand to his chest, right where he had been pierced. Of course, nothing had actually hurt him, but covered as he was with blood and gore, it was hard to tell. He patted his body, making sure he was all there. Physically, nothing was missing. But mentally? Emotionally? 

It was the nature of an Amaurotian to seek the reason behind all things. But that seemed futile now. This jocular, empty thing defied him almost completely. 

_You know, don’t you? You cannot alter this. This thing owns you, owns the very color of your soul._

Words echoed in his head. Were those his own thoughts, or something else entirely? He didn’t know. A bitter taste filled his mouth, and he felt the overwhelming urge to vomit. For all his vulnerability, though, the thing did not attack him or engage his mind again. He almost wished it would, just so it would stop staring. Staring and waiting, like its performance--there was no other word for it--had not been enough to enervate him. 

The thing gave no implication as to whether its visions were representations of what would happen, whether they were only possibilities, or whether they were simply its own ideas projected outwards, meant to vex him. It was an absurd thought, but Emet-Selch felt as if it held answers to every unspoken question, every great problem facing the world and its peoples.

Not that there would be a world anymore once the doom had its way.

He felt tears prick his eyes. He was no longer afraid, but he was ground to the bone with frustration and fatigue, and he found himself talking aloud to the thing.

"Why Amaurot?" His voice sounded strange to his own ears, as if he had not spoken in ages. "Why me? Why... any of this?" He made a sweeping motion, indicating the whole of the city. He had not been this inarticulate since he was a child. 

The creature gave no answer, as he knew it would not. It simply stood there, a wall, an unthinking entity, aloof in its grandeur. Both intensely ugly and painfully beautiful. It was no longer moaning. It chose to remain silent.

Emet-Selch thought about what it had done. It had not killed him. It _would_ not kill _him_. But he could taste something like a soul in the thing, and it was torn between a desire for destruction and a childish urge to share. It had simply wanted to show him what it knew, in its own strange way.

It was muddled, confused in its purpose, but it wanted him to remember.

He heard someone call his name then, summoning him from afar. Echoes in his mind. Elidibus, he thought, somewhere past the gate to the west. Emet-Selch tore his gaze away from the thing, feeling more energized. He could not see him, but after feeling for the color of the soul he’d heard, he was sure. Yes, that was Elidibus calling. He was alive, then. There was that at least. Best to go now. Best to let this all be. Put it behind him and seek solutions. That was what Amaurotians did. 

“I... I am leaving now,” he said in the direction of the entity. He was not sure why. 

The thing tilted to the side, as if curious. It made a sound like crunching rock as it did so. Then it turned toward the city center, and that was more painful than the silent staring had been, somehow. Pain was purple. He was done with it, and it was done with him. 

Emet-Selch turned as well, mirroring the thing he knew would seal the city’s fate. He ran toward Elidibus, toward freedom. Away from death, infinity, away from fears he had no power to quash. Toward something like hope. 

He knew not what he would do in the days to come, but his mind lay comfortably in gray trappings once more. Gray, the color of remembrance and the promise of new, precious things.


End file.
